Proverbs 27:20 (KJV)
Hell and destruction are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied.
There is always room for one more person in Hell. Likewise, death stands ready to consume person after person, regardless of age or position, and under any circumstance available to it. Similarly…and unfortunately…our human appetites can be just as ravenous and destructive. Sadly, Solomon did not always take his own godly advice, and his life stands as a testimony to today’s verse.
In Ecclesiastes, Solomon echoes himself when he says, “…the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing” (Ecc. 1:8). This was a man that was given the ability to obtain whatever he saw…and obtain is exactly what he did. “So I became great and surpassed all who were before me…And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from myself…I kept my heart from no pleasure…Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expanded in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun” (Ecc. 2:9-11).
The life of King Solomon should be a powerful reminder for all of us of the vanity of chasing after everything our eyes desire. He lived the ultimate “Been There – Done That” life yet in the end, all that he had acquired amounted to nothing in the grand scheme of things. It did not satisfy his eyes any more than another sinner satisfies Hell or another victim satisfies destruction. It is not wrong at face value to enjoy the finer things in life or to desire a nice vacation or a new car…but to assume that those things will actually satisfy “the lust of the eyes” (1 Jn. 2:16) is to play the fool, like the mouse on a spinning wheel thinking it is actually getting somewhere.
C.S. Lewis famously said, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” Everything God has created is good, and there is much enjoyment to be had from it, but all of those wonderful things are just after affects…shadows…residual blessings of the true and only source of lasting and meaningful satisfaction, which is God himself. To be fully known and fully loved by the Holy, Just, Majestic, and All-Powerful Creator of the Universe is designed to be the only true and complete satisfaction we can obtain. We all must strive to resist the temptation to settle for anything less.
